Prevention Focus: Acute HIV Infection
A growing body of research tells us that
as many as half of new HIV infections may come from the acute infection
period
The San Francisco AIDS Foundation sits at the intersection of scientific research and community experience. In devising prevention tools to meet the needs of populations most vulnerable to HIV, the Foundation is paying close attention to acute HIV infection – the period immediately after infection when HIV viral loads are extremely high. With an eye towards using this research to develop the next HIV prevention tool, Foundation staff members from every department have been actively involved in the Innovative Projects Initiative (IPI), a Foundation initiative to create, support and evaluate the next generation of evidence-based HIV prevention methods targeting the acute stage of HIV infection.
The science surrounding acute HIV infection is straightforward: after a person has been infected with HIV, the immune system may take six to eight weeks to mount an initial immune response, a window during which HIV replicates rapidly, creating a huge viral load in the bloodstream. During this period of acute infection, a person can unknowingly transmit the virus on to sexual or needle-sharing partners more easily than at any other time of infection. However, an individual may experience no symptoms nor receive a positive result on most HIV tests, since most of them detect HIV antibodies, not the virus itself, and those antibodies do not develop until between 6 and 12 weeks after initial infection. A growing body of research tells us that as many as half of new HIV infections may come from the acute infection period, so developing effective interventions is critical for the Foundation to pursue its goal of reducing and ultimately eliminating new HIV infections.
The Foundation’s own staff members are among those most knowledgeable about HIV, the people living with it, and those most at risk of contracting it. The two-year IPI will train and empower multi-departmental staff teams to take on the challenge of acute HIV infection, and will fund promising new interventions they devise. As with the Foundation’s many other HIV prevention projects, the innovative strategies resulting from the IPI may not only reduce currently endemic rates of HIV infection in San Francisco, but may become models for the rest of the nation and world. We look forward to announcing details of our program to address acute HIV infection early in 2009.
For additional information about the Innovative Projects Initiative or to learn more about HIV prevention, please contact
prevention@sfaf.org.
Page last updated:
11/25/2008